


Contradiction

by BluishRose



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Masquerade - LA By Night (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, sentimental and maybe a little sappy, the origin story of the stringboard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 07:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluishRose/pseuds/BluishRose
Summary: Chloe had always known something wasn't right about Jasper's death. Five years later, with proof having more or less fallen into her lap, she takes it upon herself to re-gather the information she got from the last time she looked into his "death." Takes place between Keep Us Apart and Unnatural Troubles.





	Contradiction

**Author's Note:**

> "A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend."  
> \- Emily Dickinson

_Sorry for listening, but I happened to be sitting nearby. And while your friend may not understand what you’re feeling, she is right. You should have somewhere to come home to, and you should move forward._

_Sorry for listening._

Black ink on a cafe napkin, now pulled from her pocket in the safety of her apartment bedroom, the words sitting there and begging at so many questions. It wasn’t the content that prompted them though; it was who wrote it, or at least, who supposedly did if her sleep-deprived, essay-burnt mind could be trusted. How could a dead man walk into a cafe, unnoticed, and leave her advice from beyond the grave? Not a word on or from him for literal years after the official investigation closed and her own, short-lived one began, and he just leaves her a note in a check holder? Evidence that Jasper was, against all odds, still out there and it literally handed itself over to her? Pure gold for her line of prospective work! Too good to be true, even. 

Chloe looked over the handwriting again, wondering, was she seeing something that wasn’t there… Maybe it was just a very nice stranger no one had noticed, not Jasper, just someone with similar handwriting? Maybe this was all just lack of sleep from writing papers? Maybe Diane was right, even jokingly, and she’d finally lost it-- _No, wait._ She had a way to confirm this right now!

Practically lunging off the bed, Chloe pulled her middle desk-drawer open and felt her way around the dust and eraser shavings to the back. She knew keeping notes from him wasn’t exactly healthy, especially when she re-discovered them while cleaning things out, but she never had the heart to get rid of them. As effective as typing was, handwritten notes gave each person their distinctions. The words they created uniquely belonged to them, a little piece of themselves to be left in the care of others. And these notes had been read and re-read so much the corners of the papers had become bent and softened as they’d been handled over the years. They were some of the few things he’d left behind, little scraps an obituary would overlook but whose absence would absolutely be felt in the hole he left behind; things like a birthday card here, an apology for not making it to a date there (“work stuff came up last minute”), a shopping list he’d left lying around at some point (she wasn’t sure how it found its way to her place). 

Satisfied, she set them on the desk, the mystery napkin between them to each be read over, looking for consistencies in the lettering. Everytime she did, the more certain she became, and found herself frequently pushing two lines with similar words close and leaning forward. It didn’t contribute at all and Chloe knew she looked ridiculous but there was a thrill to it, the same one she got when she’d caught a lead. Both on cases the college _Gazette_ ’s editor-in-chief would send her after, or back when she was a kid, curled up in bed with a murder mystery and a flashlight when everyone else was asleep. And she really was one step closer to solving a mystery, she was absolutely sure of it. Insane as it was, every letter, every line, every word, it was all his. Once again, she picked up the napkin and re-read it. Aloud this time. 

“‘You should move forward,’ really, Jasper?” A laugh crept into her voice.

  There was a bad joke in here somewhere: suggest she move on while leaving hints that he never left. Setting aside the other three handwriting samples, Chloe pulled open the bottom-most drawer on her desk. This one full of much less sentimental files, all kept together and safe, if dusty, in a folder. First, the missing person report, November 13th, 2013, a Wednesday, filled by someone going under a name she didn’t recognize. Meaning there was someone else worth reaching out to for answers. Second, the recorded timeline of her initial investigation, stopped in some hope that letting him go would help her move on; further pressured by the unspoken pleas of the people around her. At the time, she’d thought she was only worsening everyone’s pain, including her own, trying to cling to hope he was somehow still out there. Third, the obituary, she never did find out who wrote it. The author wasn’t listed and it felt strange, even for her, to ask someone from his family if they knew. Fourth, an advertisement found in the newspaper a few days after the case got closed. It was for someone to clean out his apartment. Once again, no name given to who wrote it. She made a note, there were several items here with no name to them, or people she had no idea about, all worth looking into. 

Chloe knew she was missing something more important, according to the church officials, the casket they laid in the cemetery was empty. It lined up with the inconclusive results of the case, not to mention the catalyst of her own initial investigation five years ago, the very fact that no one had found a body. None of that explained the lack of a coroner’s report though, she’d even gotten in touch with the MEC and there was nothing. She expected the absence of an autopsy when there was no body to examine, but there was also no investigation report or any other file listed under his case-number, and it didn’t take long for her to find that entering it five years after the fact gave her an error page. 

Put together, it all smelled like a cover-up and it was there she found her lead. No longer was any idea of Jasper still being out there just flimsily bound together by the hope that someone like her, someone close, would find things the authorities wouldn’t. Even if in a way, that had happened, here she was going through all this over a note in his handwriting, given to her with no one else the wiser. Still, why cover it up? If she was right, what was stopping him from just telling her in person? She stared at the documents in front of her again, all while trying to remember if there was anything he did, anything he’d said that would suggest someone would want to come after him. She made another note: get in touch with some of his old friends, see if they might know anything.  

She needed to spread all this out, get it someplace where she wouldn’t get caught up in circles while looking for more patterns. _Like the corkboard, maybe?_ She turned to glance back toward it. Yet another place to hold all manner of happier memories and accomplishments, the sorts of moments that must have made it look like she had everything all figured out. Things like the dodgeball team beating Berkley a couple seasons back, everyone sweaty and worn out but smiling in the photograph from the car-ride back; a newspaper clipping of her interview with Victor Temple, even a board-member as active as he was in the student body, with his fame, was hard to get ahold of (they had to conduct it at night, she remembered); there were also a couple of photographs of her and Jasper, before his disappearance. There weren’t as many up there in recent years, most of them were kept in a small cardboard box in her closet but she made a point to keep this one up.

“Don’t dwell too much on being sad that it ended, be glad that it happened,” she remembered being told not long after the funeral. Who it was though, that was a blur. Chloe wished she could, maybe if there weren’t so many aspects of it that just didn’t add up on closer inspection. Maybe if ignoring those things didn’t feel like she was abandoning someone who needed help. 

She grabbed an older, much larger box from her closet, everything needed to go if she wanted the room she needed. When this was over, she’d put it all back the way it was before. Maybe when she got the truth and, she almost felt fearful of hoping this much, if she was right, she would find him. _No if’s, I’m going to._ Jasper wasn’t dead, he was out there somewhere. This note was proof of just that. It had to get pinned somewhere in the middle, but also where it wouldn’t get lost in the other documents. The top maybe? With the missing person report too. The special bulletin notice should also be close, she figured, and pinned it to the upper left corner, and then closer to the center along the top, the newspaper ad, and the timeline slightly below those. Beneath the missing person report, she pinned the obituary, and then her note about the author being unknown. _Should I try to reach out to his family this time? They might know something. Or just tell me to drop it and leave it alone, proof or no._  

“Who’s gonna believe this?” She stared at the napkin again, still not entirely sure she believed it either. She’d notice Jasper if he was sitting in the same cafe as her, wouldn’t she? Maybe Juan just hadn’t either? The whole campus was tired this week, struck by that particular fatigue preceding a break that always felt long overdue. Another note to herself, this one for tomorrow: look into grabbing security footage from the coffeeshop, other places too. Chloe would sometimes get the feeling she was being watched, particularly at night, there _had_ to be something she wasn’t seeing that a camera might catch. She quickly jotted down an additional note: get some yarn while she was out tomorrow, she needed something to help visualize all these connections. 

There was something wrong with that message too, it didn’t make any sense; “move forward,” in his handwriting. If he was somehow still alive, why tell her to move forward? And why write “sorry for listening” twice? Jasper was never a poet but he was always deliberate with his words, why would he repeat himself in writing unless there was something he couldn’t say outright? On her laptop, next to the tab with the transcription, she began googling ciphers, codes, other ways to leave hidden messages in writing.  

Panicked thoughts raced through her mind, what kind of fucked up reason would he have to never say a word about being alive for five years, only to leave this vague note after so long? Every unknown person, every anonymous document written concerning him, it was truly dawning on Chloe how little she really knew about Jasper. And that she was struggling to think of why anyone would make him disappear, or what would give him a reason to fake his own death. Did he get tangled up in some kind of government conspiracy? Was he being chased by the mob? Did he get abducted by aliens? Was it vampires? Another laugh escaped her. _Take it easy, Mulder_. 

There was no way she could reach out to his family, if they knew something she didn’t was no way they’d tell her anything, not when her one tie to them seemed out of the picture. She wasn’t even sure calling on any of his friends would be such a good idea either, whether they knew anything or not. At least, maybe she’d keep that to a minimum, there was absolutely something she was missing and not talking to anyone wouldn’t get her any answers. That said, it likely wasn’t safe to bring in anyone from any of her social circles either, particularly not Diane or Dave. Chloe knew they meant well trying to pull her away from this, she and Diane were practically sisters, had been for years. Dave on the other hand? She didn’t even know how she was going to explain it to him. 

“Hey Dave? My dead ex-boyfriend isn’t actually dead and there’s a good chance he’s in trouble so I need to go find him,” she couldn’t help laughing again, if only at the absurdity. No way was Dave going to believe her on just that, or not be hurt by it. She’d deal with how she was going to go about that later, ideally when she’d gotten some sleep, same as everything else. 

She couldn’t just leave all this alone though, no matter what Diane or Dave had to say, no matter how much it could put her in danger. Not when she’d found so much overwhelming evidence of how everything she thought she knew surrounding Jasper’s “death” didn’t add up. If he was in danger, and she did nothing when she knew something, she’d never be able to forgive herself. Chloe knew she had no idea where this path was going, but she planned to follow wherever it led.

“I’m gonna find you this time, Jasper,” she turned to the photo once more. “I’m sorry I didn’t sooner, just… hold on a little longer, okay?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Two Songs listened to on repeat while writing this:  
> \- “Amber” by Koethe  
> \- “Wait For Me (live)" by Lulu Fall, Jessie Shelton, Shaina Taub, Damon Daunno, and Chris Sullivan


End file.
